this is the story of the man who never won
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: He'll take what he can get. — Damon, playing the bad guy, and loving your brother's girl.


**disclaimer:** i own little, to be honest.  
**dedication:** for mah readerz, thought i'd broaden my horizons for the pairings that don't qualify as crack anymore.  
**warning:** i'm rather impartial to both delena or stelena, just to be clear. keep me the heck out of whatever shipping wars take place, too much drama for me. also, first time writing delena, so cut me some slack. no song lyrics. rushed, shamelessly unbeta'd and probably choc-full or errors, call the grammar authorities.  
**notes:** i just finished the last episode. mind=blown. i have to wait to the frackin' fall for the next season, and am suffering severe withdrawal symptoms. so severe i've taken it into my head to write delena, i don't even KNOW where this even came from, i just had to write it down. SO MANY DAMON FEELZZZ.  
**even moar notes:** okay, it couldn't be helped. there were so many damon feelz in the last episode, it hurt my heart and arghhhh - how could i not experiment with this? the angst, the agony, so much will-we-won't-we drama, it just killed me.

* * *

.

.

.

(And you dare to be stupid, dare to be mad,  
will you brave the winter for a girl you will never have?  
She's cold as ice, bright as snow  
and she was not made for us, darling -_  
_

.

.

.

—

* * *

This is the story of the man who _never_ won.

* * *

Being nice hadn't paid off for him, Katherine had thought him an endearing little boy for being so chivalrous, so _earnestly_ in love with her. She laughs in his face, and there's a terrible twisting in Damon's throat, like razors and murder and hurt no amount of liquor can drown.

She cups his face in one hand, nails pinching, digging into his skin. He should pry her touch away, but she catches him by the chin and makes him look at her. Lips pouted, sly and red and even though he's got her pinned to a wall with a stake poised against her heart _she's_ got the advantage, she always _has._

"You're cute," she says, fingertips sliding in, slicing bloody half-moons where she's got him held. "_Ador_able."

Damon's hand shakes, his eyes burn with a devastation so potent it speaks of time torn asunder hurricanes, and love lost on illusion, and being spat on and scorned and never ever being good enough. The perpetual disappointment of the ages.

She pushes him down in that moment, hurls him to the carpet and smashes his skull against the floorboards so hard he starts to see stars haloing rustily around her head, brown hair wreathed in fire, aflame for someone else that will _never_ be him. Katherine isn't trying to murder him when she slams his head back against the wood again, knuckles tightly knotted in his hair, trying to make him ooze _brains_ - it's a 'learning experience', and she's the tutor, teaching him over and over again, knowing he will _never_ learn.

_Weak_, her eyes say, lips peeled back against her teeth. Laughing with a face that he's seen on someone else, on Elena - but Elena Gilbert can't be cruel, only foolish, like him. _Weak, stupid. _Not_ Stefan._

She tosses her curls over one shoulder, gets up and then leaves him on the floor and raids his liquor cabinet. Her laughter like acid, scraping at his insides. Her perfume as divine as blood on his tongue, and her nails still clawed into his soul.

A devil doesn't love, a devil only takes.

* * *

Damon plays the bad guy.

_Damon_ plays the bad guy because dear old Stefan just doesn't have the guts to do it without going off into the deep end. _He's_ the malevolent bastard with snark practiced to perfection - and frankly, who's he _kidding?_ He's too damn good at it to be anything else.

"Why are you such an _ass_?" Elena snaps at him, her eyes are hurt, angry, and it bows something inside him over more than Katherine ever could. With face red she's rallying against him on her porch, it's a cold December night but then again, it's not like he can really feel it.

Damon doesn't _need_ this crap, dropping off his brother's girl on her porch after another obnoxious school dance gone to hell is him doing a _favor_. And he at least deserves to be credited one night of not being yelled at, god damn.

Elena's angry, and she's never angry with anyone else but him. So that emotion at least he's sure he has monopoly over, and that is something Damon savors. It's sad and pathetic, and will do more harm than good, but it's something that's _Damon's_. Stefan can make Elena be as in love with him with all the impassioned fairy tale world notions of the Disney World, but Damon stirs something in her that's bright and brilliant as a slashing blade.

That's enough for him, and Damon settles too much for the leftovers, for the tiny things. He'll take what he can get.

"If you go on like this you're going to die alone, you're going to loose everyone." Elena says, and her dark eyes are sad. "Damon, don't you _get it?_"

A plea. A sympathetic heart, and an oblivious naivety, her strength that burrows under his skin and makes him ache mad and stupid and venomous. For these small fragments of moments he thinks she's _for_ him, that her eyes are for _him_, her _heart._

But she's his brother's girl, as all the girls he knows have always been and Damon grins crooked, fingers clenched into trembling white fists inside his pockets while his frame is still folded against the banister on her porch, deceptively at ease. Ire, however, is his friend, especially around her.

"Oh don't worry yourself over little ol me, darling," Damon says. "And _b-t-w_, the bleeding heart act's getting old."

"We're friends, and we _care_ for you! Why can't you accept that, Damon?"

"Because," Damon says, eyes hissing. "Being friends with you is a notion so stupid I wonder if you've been taking tips from Blondie."

Her eyes widen, and she seems to not breathe. Damon holds her gaze, very aware of the minefield he's deliberately waltzed them into. Elena soon gets her bearings because she looks away, can't hold him to this. Her jaw squares, eyes study a spot on the floor. "Damon," she says, but can't seem to get anything out but his name.

He should pursue the topic. He's never been a coward, but when it comes to this, he just can't.

A silence blankets over them, the chill is sharp enough to feel now. Damon's teeth grit, and he can't decide between shoving her into her house or kissing her.

He's had practice kissing his brother's girls.

Elena, however, is one experiment he doesn't want to make.

"Why," she breathes again, her eyes shining, glinting up with tears. "Why do you have to be so bad, Damon?"

"That's the difference between Stefan and me," he says, smiling sharply. "I'm not afraid of doing the wrong things. If you're going to do something bad, do it good. And I'm the best there is at this," he makes sure he sounds proud about it, he's nothing of the simpering bambi-hearted fool his brother is. Damon isn't earnest, isn't some sassy doppelganger's bitch, he's not _that_ boy anymore. He's cruel because he needs to be, no one else will do it. He figures the job falls to him, as usual. "That's the _difference_ between Stefan and me."

The only distinction that counts is that she loves one and not the other.

Damon does the math, leaves.

* * *

Stefan stinks of blood, it hangs on his skin, coils on his breath and brings deadly veins of black around his eyes. He's caged, and for all his bravado abstinence choir boy act, his hands still shake in his pockets and he can't look any living flesh and heartbeat thing in the eyes without biting sharply on his lip.

Sexy Original flanks him on his right, and Damon on his left and sometimes they exchange knowing glances. Two frat boys out to christen a naive new member, Rebekah might be smug, but Damon's also determined to see this through.

He finds a girl, gives her his best dangerous smile. Tells her she's pretty. When her face lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree Damon almost (_almost_) feels guilty. But in the next second he's got her by the throat and shoving fresh meat at Stefan.

His brother snaps angrily at them, hot righteous fury storming up in his chest. For a second he's got them maybe doubtful that he hasn't any willpower, that he's still all _viva-la resistance_ and all that _bull_shit - but the hunger is rife, lighting up his eyes and he tucks his hands under his arms, shakes as if cold.

Damon sees the way Rebekah looks at him now, the expectation, a fleeting hope in her eyes. This was a Stefan she _knew_.

Damon doesn't like that, a jealous part of him is pissed off at this scenario, at the way she licks her lips in anticipation. He chases her. "Go on, _skedaddle_," he says, sharply commanding, eyes smiling acidly. When she protests and calls him an ass, Damon's words are harder, meaner. "Get the hell out of here."

She casts him an equally scornful glance and leaves.

"No," Stefan growls dangerously.

Sure, that makes all the _little_ boys pee their pants, but this is _Damon_, and he's _so_ over this. He gives Stefan an ultimatum, begins to drain her dry. This way at least, he figures, Stefan won't feel so guilty about giving in - seeing that Damon hasn't given him a choice in the matter.

And there's his brother again, looking betrayed, but animal like. And he lunges.

The look on Elena's face is priceless, more though, it's supposed to make him feel sorry. Stefan crumples under her astonished stare, but it's Damon who holds the bulk of the blame in her eyes - she's next to the quarterback, and she really shouldn't be wandering out tonight.

Blood still curls around his tongue, and he smiles when she leaves. Betrayal was very much a two way street.

* * *

"Cold turkey never works for Stefan," he says, when he goes out to her porch again. He still remembers kissing her, taking the initiative that night. Elena's eyes boil, there's the hot whirlwind of anger in his own chest, that he's still the bad guy after all this time, even if it's Stefan who's the ripper, Damon might as well be freaking Hitler for all it ever mattered. "I'm doing what I need to do."

"I'd believe that," Elena hisses, "if you didn't seem to be having so much fun."

"I don't find this fun, sister," Damon laughs, humored nonetheless. "Okay, maybe a little. However, Stefan needs this. You do want your little boyfriend back, don't you? Figured I was doing you a favor -"

His turned cheek cancels out half the impact of her open-palmed slap - his cheek feels numb, but Elena's the one who clutches her injured hand to her chest, glaring at him, red flushing her face.

His fingers itch, coil and uncoil behind his back. He's not smiling anymore, her eyes glint with unshed tears, whether from the pain her hand is probably giving her, or her precious emotions, he's not sure.

"I won't let him be a monster."

_Like me, you mean?_ His mind fouls with jealous thoughts again, of throwing her down, and drowning Stefan out of her mind. "Oh, I'm just," Damon flexes his jaw, tests it out to humor her feeble little strike on him. "Your friendly neighborhood enabler. You can bet your saint's ass that this won't be the last time I make my brother do this."

He ditches her ass there on the porch, doesn't give a damn. Really.

* * *

In the end, it's _Stefan_. It's _always_ been Stefan - Stefan with his heart of gold, with _her_ heart, the heart of the girl who looked too damn much like Katherine to be anything like her. Stefan who gets the girl, Stefan who makes it and Damon who breaks. "Maybe if I had met you first," she says, hushed against the receiver. He can taste her tears through the phone line, but then maybe that's just him, always so blind, _imagining_ things that can never ever be his. "Damon," she says, and he hangs on that name like it's a beat on a flat line, but it's not. A flat line's a flat line and _this is it_. "Goodbye."

He dreams of a girl with dark hair and laughing eyes, on a road in a nowhere, deadbeat town. She had extraordinary eyes, and he'd _known_ her - he'd met her, and he'd almost had her, but he hadn't. He made her forget.

It's just his luck that _that_ little bout of compulsion comes back to bite him in the ass.

_Maybe if I had met you first._

Evil!Ric's fist comes slamming down, he feels wood digging into his skin, a stake with a sharp point. Hope is an involuntary human response, even to one who's bound to loose. But_ maybe if I had met you first,_ and there's the hot bubble of hope in his chest, fighting the devastation, wrestling with the venomous assurance that all he can do is _loose._

He grabs at the wrists pinning him down, grinds his teeth, thinks foolishly, humanly that he's a goddamn _masochist._

"No," he snarls, blood on his tongue. Hell on his throat. "Not today."

* * *

—

.

.

.

-she's not made for you at all.)___  
_

.

.

.

* * *

**end notes:** the intro lyrics-caption thingies are credited to me. ALSO, first time writing delena, so if you could throw me some constructive feedback it would totally be appreciated. if you liked it, tell me, and i might consider writing more. :)

P.S be a darling and take a gander at my other stories?

k'thxbai. sleeping now.


End file.
